The invention is particularly applicable to fry baskets and will be described with particular reference thereto. However, it will be appreciated by those skilled in the art that the invention has broader applications and may also be adapted for use as deep fryer trap, deep fryer filter, deep fryer basket, and the like.
Restaurants that serve fried food use a great deal of cooking oil. When food particles are not filtered and make their way into the oil, they cause the oil to break down more quickly. This affects the taste of the fried food and greatly shortens the useable lifespan of the cooking oil.
Typically fry baskets are constructed of thick wire with wide gapes formed between the wires. This arrangement allows food particles to remain in the fryer through many fry cycles, thus reducing the quality and useable lifespan of the oil. By removing the food particles more frequently, preferably ever frying cycle, the oil is maintained at a higher quality for a longer period of time. Efforts to maintain cooking oil quality for longer periods of time have yielded less than ideal solutions.
Many potential solutions focus on filtering the oil after the fryer is done being used. That is the entire fryer must be drained and filtered. Which requires the fryer to be shut down and allowed to cool, that is if safe methods are being practiced. This method is time consuming, not energy efficient, and by consequence expensive. Many potential solutions simply focus on speeding up this method by constructing built in filters for fryers or suction filters that more quickly filter the oil.
Other potential solutions focus on catching the food particles earlier in the fryer. Some of these take the form of fryer liners that set in the flyer like a large fry basket made of wire mesh. To be effective these liners need to emptied frequently. So in practice the user needs to remove a fry basket filled with fried food items, and then remove the liner and dump its contents. This is an added step that takes time, thus making the frying process less efficient. Alternatively, if the fryer liner is not removed every fry cycle, then the oil preservation benefits are diminished.
Yet another potential solution is the inserting of metal mesh liners into traditional fry baskets. While this solves some of the short comings of the previously mentioned solutions, it also creates several new problems. Among the problems is that the fry liners can fall out of the traditional basket if not properly secured. Also, food particles can become lodged between the mesh and the wire basket, thus diminishing the effectiveness of the liners.
Accordingly, it has been considered desirable to develop a new and improved fry basket which would overcome the foregoing difficulties and others while providing better and more advantageous overall results.